Olympic Games 1992 Barcelona

25th Olympiad

SPAIN

Mascot

Cobi
the Sheep Dog

The mascot 1992

Like the emblem, the mascot identifies a particular Olympic Games, but
in a way more guaranteed to inspire affection. To choose the mascot for
Barcelona, another closed competition was called, also with six designers:
Fernando Amat, Angel Beaumont, Francesc Capdevila, Javier Mariscal, Francesc
Petit and Pere Torrent "Peret". The same jury that had to choose the Olympic
emblem examined the different proposals for the mascot, talked to the designers
before they began to implement the projects and, on 29 January 1988, chose
the one by Javier Mariscal. It consisted of an image of a human-looking
dog, with open arms, sketched in a thick, uneven, black line and treated
with a false perspective that gave it a flattened effect. Although it was
an anthropomorphic animal, the quality of the drawing and the treatment
of colour (flat colours with neither gradations nor textures and a tendency
to shun the primaries) made it quite different from most earlier Olympic
mascots, all of which had been clearly influenced by the Walt Disney school
of cartoons.

In order to make the mascot more acceptable to the general public, Josep
M. Trias used computers to soften the shape. Once the definitive image
of the first official mascot had been achieved, it was baptised. The name
chosen was "CoBi", which made an allusion to the initials of COOB'92 and
was easy to remember and pronounce in most languages. The arbitrary combination
of upper and lower case letters and the typography in which the name was
presented (an alphabet created specially by Mariscal) helped to make "CoBi"
more than just a name: it was a logotype.

The shape of the mascot was gradually modified until it reached its
definitive appearance, by when it had already been introduced to the public
as the second Olympic symbol of Barcelona'92.